Long post – sorry, but I believe we’ve reached Phase II in the War and that we are on the brink of a diplomatic revolution that will shape the next several decades. Here’s why:
Jack Straw’s asinine mission to Teheran is actively undermining our efforts to box Iran. High time we brought the curtain down on this farce.
The deeper issue here is that, despite all the convergence between us and the Euros, despite the common rhetoric and values, the fact of the matter is that on the crucial test of wills between us and the mullahs and the Iraqi resistance, most leading EU politicians are inclined to support the other side. In France’s case, it’s blatant: the French are now running around the middle east proclaiming their solidarity with the region’s anti-US and anti-Iraqi forces.
This is a radical new development. Even during the height of European hysteria about Reagan, neither Mitterrand nor Schmidt nor any west European leader would even think of breaking ranks with Reagan and supporting Andropov or Chernenko.
The upshot of it is that the West as a coherent strategic entity no longer exists. We have no choice but to accept these hard, sober facts about the new world reality:
– there is no correlation between the degree of democracy in a nation and that nation’s importance to us as an ally in our war with the jihadists;
– though our cause is just, we cannot win this war unless we make common cause with many nations and regimes that we have heretofore considered alien or not compatible with US values;
– there will be no ceasing of the pronounced tendencies toward self-hatred and self-blame of large segments of western populations.
Bottom line: time for us to abandon the nonsense that only democracies can be our allies. It’s 1941 again. We need to quit wasting so much time with Europeans who cannot help or harm us much in this new world and set about re-ordereing our alliances and diplomatic priorities with a cold eye on the main chance.
In other words, Russia and India’s support and eager, active coordination are more important to us than anything France or Germany are likely to provide. If we’re to defeat the jihadists, we need to go back to diplomatic realpolitik and shift our attention to this century’s emerging great powers, the ones that truly do have critical assets to lend us in the near and far east.
NATO’s useless. The West is dead. Move on, Americans.
